Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 341: Olympic Lifts, TRX, Alcohol Vs. Sugar + MORE!

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

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Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matrenga. And in today's episode, I'm going to be answering some of your questions. We're going to be discussing advice for anybody entering the strength and conditioning field, specifically students or trainers and coaches. We're going to be discussing the optimal training frequency for building and seeing visible muscle growth. We will also discuss whether or not I think it's worth it for most people to learn the Olympic lifts, the clean, the snatch, the clean and jerk, things like that. I'll share my thoughts on suspension trainers and TRX

and why I think everybody should have one, as well as a compare and contrast with the kind of common question, sugar versus alcohol. We're going to look at which of those two may or may not be worse for you, depending on context. So should be a fun episode with a little housekeeping before we get started. Thanks so much for tuning in and enjoy. This podcast wouldn't be possible if it wasn't thanks to support from our awesome partners, one of whom is Vivo Barefoot. Vivo makes the best barefoot training shoe on the market. For years, I stayed away from barefoot training shoes despite knowing the benefit of low cushion, wide toe box shoes for the health of our feet, the intrinsic musculature that helps

support everything that we do. I stayed away from these shoes because I thought they were ugly. But that was until, of course, Vivo started producing some absolutely gorgeous barefoot training shoes. These are low cushion, lightweight, breathable trainers that have a ton of bend, a ton of flex, low cushioning to provide for optimal stimulation of the proprioceptors at the bottom of your foot. Fun fact, 70% of the proprioceptive cells in your body, the cells that tell your body where it is in space to help you be coordinated, to help you create movement, balance, stability, all of these things. They're located on the bottom of your foot fighting to make contact with some kind of surface so they can get the tactile feedback they need to help you optimize

and coordinate movement. That's why when you're barefoot, you probably feel more stable and more connected to the ground. And I have never found a shoe that feels better to train in, not just train my clients and stand around in for eight hours a day, but literally train in. Tons of fantastic mobility out of my toe box, the ability to spread my toes, all in one beautiful climate-friendly package. I'm a huge fan of the Primus knit lights. I have them in obsidian. I have them in bright white. And I absolutely love this shoe. I have been in obsidian. I have them in bright white, and I absolutely love this shoe. I have been raving about it for three or four weeks straight. I've never had a better training shoe in my life. You simply can't beat these. They feel great. They look great. My

fiance even said, wow, those shoes, and I quote, make it look like, you know what you are doing, which that's all I need to hear. Not sure exactly what that means, but I'm guessing it means good things. All the trainers and coaches at my studio said they make my calves look great. And I think this is because when you're wearing a barefoot shoe, you're using more of the intrinsic muscle of your foot and ankle complex that is so imperative for movement. Trust me when I say you've never had a better pair of training shoes than you will when you try Vivo Barefoot. You can't beat these. And Vivo is offering listeners of this podcast a special 10% off order by using the code DANNY10 on VivoBarefoot.com. You can just scroll down to the show notes and grab a pair, but these shoes are fantastic. They're beautiful. They train incredibly well.

They're durable, and I promise they'll be the best pair of shoes you've ever had in the gym. Again, that's vivobarefoot.com, and check out using the promo code DANNY10 to save 10% on the best pair of shoes you've ever owned. All right, so getting into episode 341 and answering your questions. Starting first with Mayher105. That is the Instagram handle for this user. If you want your questions, your fitness questions, health questions, performance questions answered in a longer format where we can go a little deeper and provide a little bit more detail than Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or any of the platforms that you might find my content,

definitely be sure to pay attention to my Instagram stories. That is specifically where I grab questions for the podcast. My username there is danny.matranga. And at least once a week, I throw up a question box so I can interact with you guys. And the questions that I think require more context, depth, or have the greatest opportunity to help the most people oftentimes get pulled for the show. So Mayher105 asks, what's worse, sweets or alcohol? So we will specifically talk about sweets that are sweetened with sugar. I think that there are some sweets that are sweetened with non-nutritive sweeteners. And those would be things that are in the category of artificial sweeteners, things like aspartame or sucralose, or even some calorie-free natural sweeteners like maybe monk fruit or stevia. But for the context of the episode today, let's only talk about sugar and alcohol.

I will say that I do believe it is possible to enjoy both of these compounds on a semi-regular basis. I think a lot of the demonization around sugar specifically is given without context. The sugar from an ultra-processed food that is designed to be hyperpalatable, designed to drive excessive consumption, is considerably different from the sugar that you might find in a piece of fruit. The food matrix, and this is something I learned from the great Alan Aragon in a discussion we had about dairy, the food matrix, which is the total composition of the food, not the individual ingredients, plays a huge role in the health or the not so healthy promoting

impact of the food. For example, a lot of people worry about, we'll use dairy. Dairy contains lactose. Dairy contains various compounds and things like cheese that are very nutrient dense and contain a lot of additional nutrients might actually be health promoting in a way that a dairy product that is not so nutrient dense and has a different food matrix, let's use ice cream, for example, might not. So if we just lump all sweets or all sugar into one category, or we say sugar equals bad, and we ignore the food matrix, we aren't doing ourselves any favors, and we're not taking a truly evidence-based thoughtful look at the foods that we're eating. So I would say that sugary foods that are, like I said, hyper-processed, ultra-processed, designed to be overeaten, you want to minimize

those. But things like fruits that contain a good amount of naturally occurring sucralose, a lot of, sorry, fructose. There you go. So sucralose is an artificial sweetener. Fructose. So if you have a lot of fructose, like you're thinking, well, there's a lot of sugar, but the food matrix of the fruit contains vitamins, oftentimes fiber, polyphenols, antioxidants. And when you look at the amount of sugar in a piece of fruit relative to the health promoting benefits of the entire food matrix, it would be a shame to avoid the consumption of fruit out of a fear of sugar. Now, if you're using the sugar in a ultra processed food, like a traditional soda as an indicator

of like, Hey, not only does this beverage contain zero nutrients, it also contains like 150 calories and four, 35 grams of sugar. Um, you know, that's something where sugar might be an indicator that we should avoid it. But I think avoiding all sugar entirely can in many ways cause problems. Now let's look at alcohol. Alcohol in almost every context and almost every dosage has been shown to be relatively negative, if not terrible for human health. Even single doses of alcohol have a negative health effect. And if you drink more than seven drinks per week, which is just a drink a

day, that is linked to a pretty considerable increase in various forms of cancer, metabolic disorder. And while small amounts of drinking occasionally in social settings could actually be health promoting because of the social enhancement that being with friends provides to our lives and our wellbeing, regular drinking, in my opinion, even when we consider the food matrix of an alcoholic beverage, maybe it's something that contains nutrients like, uh, you know, wine, for example, that has antioxidants and polyphenols. I think the best alcohol is still more harmful for you than the most ultra-processed, when we look at the pro argument for both or the context and situations where including them makes sense, I think if we're going to be enjoying things that are very sweet, very sugary, hyper-processed, ultra-processed, we want to do that on occasion.

We want to be thoughtful and we want to monitor portions. If we are going to be excluding fruit from the diet out of a fear of sugar, I think that's actually an example of what I would call stepping over dimes or rather stepping over dollars to pick up dimes. It would be negatively affecting your health to avoid sugar in all contexts, unless you have a explicit reason, medical reason for doing so. Now, alcohol, on the other hand, I think the best way to avoid the negative effects of alcohol is with complete abstinence and sobriety, avoiding it altogether. But if you are someone for whom being social, being in social settings and drinking on occasion is going to promote pro-social behavior, deepen relationships, enhance your ability to enjoy life, then again, it's just all about paying very close attention to the amount.

I'm not a big fan of demonizing either food here. I will say specifically to answer the question of what's worse, I think it's alcohol without question because there are some food matrices, specifically fruit, where sugar and the potential negative effects of high amounts of sugar are offset by the nutrient density of the food matrix in which it's found. And that is not the case in alcohol. And I know many people will argue with this, that there are health promoting benefits to red wine. And to that, I would just say, you know, if you are so invested in the health promoting benefits of your nightly glass of red wine, why isn't it that you don't enjoy things like grape juice, which contain all of the same food matrix profile

that make red wine purportedly so healthy, but none of the alcohol. So I think there's a way here to strike a balance, practice moderation. I wouldn't make a habit out of including a lot of alcohol or ultra processed sugary foods in your diet, but I think restricting them all the time, I mean, I don't drink at all, but I have a unique rationale for doing this. Alcoholism and addiction run in my family, and it's not something that I actually enjoy all that much. I don't see a particular issue with choosing to stay away from these things or choosing to include them in small amounts, but you need to be thoughtful. And if you are including or eating or grazing on these things without thought, which is so common with sugary foods and alcohol, you just grab it and get into it.

I think it's time to pump the brakes and ask yourself, what are the food matrices in which I'm finding these things? How do they fit into the context of my overall diet? Am I including them once a day, multiple times a day? Do I have a dependence issue forming? And so I skew slightly towards alcohol being worse, but in the context of your life, the inclusion of both in reasonable amounts will not be harmful. What's going on guys, Coach Dannyy here taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company core coaching method and more specifically our one-on-one fully tailored online coaching program my online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for core coaching method for a while of course we do have pdf programming and we have app-based programming but if you want

a truly tailored one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is certified, somebody who has multiple years of experience working with clients in person online, somebody who is licensed to provide a macro nutrition plan, somebody who is actually good at communicating with clients because they've done it for years, whether that be via phone call, email, text, right? This one-on-one coaching program is really designed to give you all the support you need with custom training designed for you, whether you're training from home, the gym, around your limitations and your goals, nothing cookie cutter here, as well as easy to follow macro nutrition programs that are non-restrictive. You'll get customized support directly from your coach's email, or they'll text

you, or they'll WhatsApp you. We'll find the communication medium that best supports your goals as well as provides you with the accountability and the expertise you need to succeed, as well as biofeedback monitoring, baked-in accountability support, and all of the stuff that you need from your coach when you check in. We keep our rosters relatively small so that we can make sure you get the best support possible. But you can apply today by going over to corecoachingmethod.com, selecting the online coaching option. And if we have spots available, we'll definitely reach out to you to see if you're a good candidate. And if we don't, we'll put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry. So head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. Okay. This question comes from Reese

Truder. And the question is advice for someone studying strength and conditioning. So let's include under the umbrella of strength and conditioning, pre-physical therapy, pre-occupational therapy, kinesiology, biomechanics, any of the fields of kinesiology that might lead one to being a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, a strength and conditioning coach, or a personal trainer. Those tend to be, I have a biomechanist as well. You know, somebody who specializes in orthopedics. You know, all of these people have a pretty considerable, you know, background in human anatomy and the biological sciences. But, you know, what would my advice be for somebody who is studying to either get a degree in these fields, a certification in these fields, a certification

in these fields. And I'm guessing if you're studying them, ultimately you would like to make a living, um, in these fields. So, you know, I have a pretty unique pathway to the career that I have now. You know, I, I, I own an in-person fitness studio and physical therapy studio. You could call it a clinic. Um, I own an online coaching company. I have a podcast. I have a presence on social media. And I think that a lot of people who get into strength and conditioning or who get into kinesiology or who get into fitness ultimately want to have an outcome that either combines multiple of the things I mentioned, or they have the aspiration for just one. Maybe you got into fitness training because you want to be an influencer.

Maybe you got into, you know, pre-physical therapy because you want to own a clinic. Maybe you're studying strength and conditioning because you want to work at the university level and work with athletes, right? So the first piece of advice I would give you is during your studies, during your academic tenure, if you're in school or during your, you know, internship program, perhaps when you're getting certified, pay close attention to what it is that you derive the most joy from and what it is you're willing to work the hardest on. I know when I got started as a personal trainer, I thought I wanted

to be an athlete, somebody who focused on training athletes, somebody who worked in the strength and conditioning field explicitly with professional athletes at the highest level. And so I started working with a lot of young people. I attended a ton of sports performance seminars. I got my strength and conditioning certification from the NSCA, the CSCS. from the NSCA, the CSCS. And through training a lot of athletes, going to a lot of seminars, talking to a lot of strength and conditioning coaches, I actually learned that it's kind of a thankless job. People don't get paid very well. Universities typically very much underappreciate and disrespect strength and conditioning coaches, unless it's at a very high division one level. You are expected to pay your dues and eat a whole lot of shit. And a lot of times getting athletes to be enthusiastic about engaging in fitness when they're in their mid to late teens or early twenties is really, really hard. And so I actually found out through experience that that wasn't for me. So my first piece of advice is find that avenue or that, let's call it, field that you're most passionate

about. And even if you can't work in that field, find ways to get exposed to that field by going to events, seminars, searching for internships, or searching for clients in that context. The same could be true for physical therapy. My major originally was pre-physical therapy and the goal that my goal was to go to graduate school and be a physical therapist. And one of the things that I found out when I was in school studying and following this track was that, you know, not all physical therapy contexts are the same. You know, some of them are very clinical. Some of them are very hospital-based. Some of them aren't particularly hands-on. And if you talk to people who have had a very clinical physical therapy experience, they oftentimes have a super negative impression of the

field. But I work with a physical therapist in the clinic that we have that's very hands-on. There's lots of waits. There's lots of time off of the table. It's not just stretching and manual work. It's very hands-on, which is a totally different experience from what I had seen growing up and what I had been exposed to in my undergraduate career. And so in that field in particular, you might end up in a situation where you realize, damn, I can't do inpatient. I have to do outpatient because inpatient's just too clinical and it's not for me.

And so I think it's very important to expose yourself to a lot of different things, a lot of different potential clients, potential different demographics. If you're going to a more clinical setting, are you an orthopedic? Are you a physical therapist? Are you a post-op, are you an orthopedic? Are you a physical therapist? Are you a post-op physical therapist? Are you inpatient? Are you outpatient? Are you maybe pediatric? What floats your boat? What makes you happy? And you're not going to get that from just being in the classroom. You have to pursue internships, pursue opportunities to shadow, pursue opportunities to engage in the field. I have a mentorship client. And

before I continue, a lot of you guys ask about mentorship specific to fitness, specific to your career in fitness. If that is something that you are interested in, send me an email, danny at coach dannymatranga.com, include in the subject line mentorship, and we can discuss how we might work together to help you better carve out a path in your career. It's very difficult for me right now to do this in a group setting. Eventually, I'd like to do a course. Eventually, I'd like to do some type of hands-on event. But right now, I'm just doing everything on a one-on-one basis. A lot of you guys have asked about this, so I just want to throw it out there before I forget. But one of my one-on-one

mentorship clients, David, dude's a total stud, has done more mentorship and internship hours than anybody I know on his pathway to becoming a physical therapist who specializes in working with adults who've suffered from traumatic brain injury, who suffer from disability. One of the hardest demographics to work with, David has exposed himself to so much that it has actually allowed him to get his focus extremely narrow. Through this exposure, through all the internship hours, through all the studies, David has really found what he is the most passionate about. And I just think his example is a great one for ultimately making the determination

as to what is going to work for you. And I think one of the things a lot of young people struggle with when they're in school and they're studying to get a degree is they get about halfway through, maybe two, three years in in and they figure out like, holy shit, I don't even like this. The amount of people that I went to school with in my undergraduate education, I didn't go to graduate school. So I just did four years of college. So my experience is probably much more limited than many of you probably went to school longer. But, and I'm sure many of you who do have a college education know this a lot of people don't work ever even a day in the field that they got their degree in they just started you know at 18 years

old and put four years in to get this degree because it's what their parents wanted it's very important that you get yourself out of the academic setting into the real world specific to strength and conditioning to answer Reese's question. I think internships are definitely number one. Certifications can be great. Get in a context where you are working in a weight room with teams, with athletes, find out if that's for you. And if it's not pivot. Next question from me, George, George, How many times a week should one train to start seeing muscle? That's a good question. How many times a week should somebody train to maximally cultivate visible muscle tissue? You want to see a ton of muscle. You want to look jacked.

And I think our natural inclination would be six to seven times a week. Let's max it out. Let's do as many sessions as we reasonably can. The only problem with that that I have found is unless you have the time and energy outside of the gym to allocate to sleep, recovery, performance, all of these things, the likelihood of you recovering from that many challenging sessions is quite low. And recovering from your training is where your results come from. So if you're doing more training than you can recover from, your training will not be all that productive.

It's all about striking a balance. And I think the sweet spot, especially for seeing muscle, because so much of that is driven by leanness and that requires really good nutritional consistency is actually like four to five sessions a week. The reason for this is that four to five sessions a week I have found allows enough time up to two to three additional days to focus on prepping food, recovering, getting additional steps or movement to enhance caloric expenditure. Having to go to the gym six to seven times a week means you have that much less time to cook, to prepare food, to focus on recovery. And in truth, you only make the gains you recover from

and your nutrition drives your leanness and your muscle growth. So if you want a visibly muscular lean physique and you are allocating a ton of time to training, but not a ton of time to nutrition and recovery, you're doing something wrong and you're certainly leaving gains on the table. So I think the sweet spot for most people is actually four to five days a week. And to just put this into context, I have one client who competes at a very high level of natural bodybuilding, and she is extremely, extremely effective with six days a week training because she has just absolutely dialed the nutrition. But for most of my other clients who are not at that level,

but they have impressive physiques, I'd say 95%, four to five actually works better. So it's not to say that you couldn't swing six or seven. You just have to really have systems in place. You have to really have skills and tools. And the truth is most people do not have that because they have other things in their life that might be more important than fitness. Okay. Question from aviera49. And that question is, how do I feel about the Olympic lifts and are they worth trying to learn? I think it's a really good question. And I think CrossFit has, you know, repopularized the Olympic lifts, things like cleans, things like snatches, things like clean and jerks, hang cleans, hang cleans etc and if you are young orthopedically sound meaning you don't have joint pain or dysfunction learning the olympic lifts can be

a great way to increase coordination to expand the repertoire your toolbox that is the arsenal of lifts that you can do but if you don't have the explicit goal of developing power, of developing strength, or developing the actual skill of the Olympic lift, which is pertinent to people who compete in Olympic lifting and CrossFit, I think you can get a lot of the benefits people get from Olympic weightlifting, specifically the clean and the snatch, by just doing those same lifts with a kettlebell, actually not using a barbell, which is much more technical, but doing your kettlebell cleans and your kettlebell snatches. And you know, a kettlebell swing is very ballistic and trains hip extension. So

power cleans, snatches, those things are much more technical and I'll be it. I'll admit quite bad-ass when done with a barbell, but they're a lot easier to learn with a kettlebell and you can actually pick up a ton of that same benefit without a lot of the same learning curve that is associated with the barbell. So for most people, I would say you can pass on learning the Olympic lifts unless you want to be a coach or you want them in your repertoire. But if you'd like to get the benefits, go for it. However, if you want the benefits easy, go ahead and teach yourself how to do those same lifts with kettlebells and progress them all the same. Last question from Westerse, and that is, what are my thoughts on TRX

suspension trainers? Is it effective for building strength? So I I've been coaching for many, many years and I can't think of a more practical piece of equipment that drives more, that has more versatility, takes up less space, can be put in any home gym than a suspension trainer. Suspension trainers are amazing at filling in the gaps that a lot of people struggle with when they're building a home gym You'll find if you get dumbbells and kettlebells and even barbells It's easy to hit things like your legs and your chest But it can be kind of tricky to hit movements That target the back and the shoulders without just doing a ton of raises and presses and rows

But a suspension trainer allows you to do a ton of movements for the back and for the shoulders. It adds a ton of versatility. You can train your core. You can train your hamstrings. I love using the suspension trainer in the studio. I travel with one. I think that, you know, when we went through the pandemic and people were working out from home, I expected these to become way more popular than they did for some reason, though, they are just not altogether that popular, but the versatility is amazing. You can build a lot of muscle in the back and in the shoulders using movements on a suspension trainer that, you know, I'm not going to say you can't do that more efficiently with, with free weights. I'm sure you could. Um, but again, the ability to travel with it, to,

to, you know, fill in the gaps with it. The fact that they're not altogether that expensive, the fact that you can mount them to a wall or toss them over a door makes them a no brainer for me. I am a huge, huge fan and I recommend them for every home gym. All right, folks, that does it for this episode of the podcast. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and remind you to be sure to hit subscribe or follow on Apple podcasts. Leave me a five star rating and review if you can. It helps other people find the show. And if you're listening and you could take a screenshot and tag me on Instagram story, I'd love to say thank you and show you some appreciation for being a valued listener in a world full of podcasts. I thank you

all so much for choosing mine. I'll catch you on the next one. you